An Important Purpose
by pesky.lil.critter
Summary: One-shot. Roy LeGrange never lies if he can help it. And he knows a lot more about Dean than he says. 07/21/12 - Now has an additional chapter, also a one-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Just an idea I got watching 'Faith' again. I do wonder what exactly happened to Layla and Roy.

* * *

**An Important Purpose**

Roy never lies if he can help it.

What he says to the young man with the heart problem, Dean, is entirely true. 'A young man with an important purpose, a job to do. And it isn't finished.' Entirely true, but not the entire truth.

Roy knows a lot more about this young man than he says. But most aren't things he needs to hear.

He is confident in his abilities and yet does not love himself. He will risk his life for another person without thought if it will save them, and he'll fight to save himself as long as possible. He makes exceptions for people who have done terrible things, fight a little less for their lives. He makes exceptions for the people he loves, fights that much harder for their lives and a lot less for his own. There are few people this man loves, and most have earned the privilege. When he does love, he loves deeply and forever.

Roy suspects that most people, even those that know him best, would be surprised at how deeply this man feels. He has a remarkable soul, in Roy's opinion, and he keeps it well-guarded.

Roy wonders what will become of him.

* * *

He finds out through Layla, who still visits sometimes, even if her mother refuses to come near Roy.

She tells him that Dean sends her letters. Sometimes she gets three or four within a few days, and sometimes a whole month passes. Layla reads them aloud for Roy.

Dean tells her of the places he and his brother travel to, and of the people they meet, and sometimes the things they do.

He tells her of his father's death, months after it happens, and she tells Roy that the paper is tear-stained and the handwriting shaky.

Roy sometimes thinks waiting for Dean's letters is the only thing that keeps her clinging to life so stubbornly. After she dies, eight months after Sue Ann, Layla's mother sends the letters to Roy.

That is the only reason he learns, in the summer of 2008, of Dean's death.

The letter, written by Dean's brother Sam, does not mention the manner of his death, only (and James, who often reads to Roy, points out the similarity converning the state of the paper and the handwriting between this letter and the one relating the death of the father) that he died to save Sam's life.

_Well_, Roy thinks, _maybe his job's done now._


	2. Chapter 2

**Dear Layla…**

When I make them, and it's a rare enough occasion, I keep my promises.

The promise I make to Layla is an easy one, to make and to keep. I take the time once every day to ask God to help her. I don't quite dare to be more specific than that, in case there's actually somebody listening, and there's a always the possibility that my idea of helping doesn't mesh with what's best for Layla.

I keep up the praying, and the letters, long after the five months the doctors gave her are over.

I don't look her up. This is one certainty I'd rather not have. This is one uncertainty I'm glad to live with.

* * *

At some point, the praying and the letter-writing become a habit, a part of the routine, a part of what constitutes normal for me.

I don't even notice that I've begun to include anything other than Layla in my prayers until, after another near-death experience for Sam, I find myself fervently, sincerely thanking God for his life.

The letters have turned into something like a journal. Of course, I have to leave out all the supernatural stuff, but the letters become a tangible record of my life as I experience it. (As opposed to what my police record makes it out to be.)

* * *

After Hell (and yes, it absolutely deserves the capital letter), I stop sending the letters to Layla, particularly because it's been more than two years since she had five months. I'd be more hopeful if it was cancer, but an inoperable brain tumor still means certain death.

Doesn't mean I stop writing entirely. Or even that I address the letters to anyone else. I just send them to a P.O. Box instead, but I continue to begin each and every one with the words _Dear Layla…_

Writing these letters is a habit I don't give up for the rest of my life.

* * *

Sarah and Dave buy the car because it's in peak condition, even though it's more than a hundred years old. They figure, if it's survived this long, it'll survive a good while longer if they take proper care of it.

They don't find the letter (and the secret compartment in the trunk) until they've had the car two years and Sarah can't drive anymore because her belly hasn't fit behind the steering wheel since she hit the seven month mark.

Dave is unloading bags of groceries and baby stuff when he spots a bit of paper sticking out where it's got no business being. He tugs at it, thinking it's probably a corner torn from whatever files he had in the trunk last, but it won't move so he takes the bags inside and comes back to take a closer look.

Fifteen minutes later he's holding a white envelope and staring at an impressive assortment of weapons.

Sarah comes outside to tell him that the baby's coming _right fucking now_! So Dave closes the secret weapon compartment and the trunk and runs inside to get the hospital bag that's been sitting in the hallway closet for half a year and drives his wife to the hospital as fast as he can without breaking a law.

He doesn't think about the trunk or the letter for several months.

* * *

Layla grows up with bedtime stories about monsters and the two brothers that hunt them. The _Dear Layla…_ letters stay in a box beneath her bed from her sixteenth birthday until she gives them to her youngest daughter when little Sam turns sixteen.

When Sam gives the letters to her daughter Caroline, Layla thinks her Granny Claire would probably be proud of her. Great-Grandfather Jimmy would be less so.

When Layla's grandson Jonathan leaves home to become a hunter like the two brothers in Layla's bedtime stories, she wonders if somewhere there are two young men watching, maybe feeling pride in this new generation.


End file.
